“I think Chris Todd is fine,” offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn said. “I think any quarterback in the country — Week 8, who’s thrown a little bit — is maybe going to be a little bit different than the first game. I think he’s no different than anybody else.”

Ay, but here’s the rub: Todd the past two weeks has not been “a little bit different,” at least in terms of final performance. He’s been a lot different. And while other beat writers interpreted Chizik’s and Malzahn’s assurances as a little more emphatic, I’m with Tate: if you’re asked “is he 100 percent?” and come back with anything that’s not “Yes, he is,” I’m forced to conclude that he’s not. I have no doubt that the coaches believe Todd can get the job done; at this point, with so many first-hand accounts of Todd’s passes not looking the way they ought to look and his exhaustive injury history, I also don’t have a lot of doubt that his arm just isn’t all that healthy.

First things first.The first two losses of the season, one in something bordering on a rout, the other a hair-pullingly frustrating offensive no-show to echo certain parts of 2008: time to check on how the team’s psyche is doing, isn’t it?

Antoine Carter saw the losses mount on the field and the direction of the team go south in the locker room last season.

The Auburn defensive end says that won’t happen to the Tigers this year, even after two straight losses.

“It’s different from lastyear. The team is not dividing,” says Carter. “It’s a strong family this year – a stronger bond” …

Carter and others have acknowledged this fall that a split in last year’s team served to undermine the season, especially down the stretch when Auburn lost six of its final seven games.

OK, so we can’t expect Carter (or Chizik or Todd or Trott, all of whom are quoted in the story saying “Everything’s swell!”) to really say anything different. But if you’ll remember the vibe after the second loss to 2008–the 14-13 apocalypse against Vandy that prompted Tate to openly question Franklin’s offense and Burns to say it “wasn’t what he came to Auburn” for–this still qualifies as a dramatic improvement over the horrors of last fall.

Chizik. Yesterday’s presser didn’t reveal much: he says nice things about LSU, he says the team is still positive, he says (again) that the depth concerns are affecting the way the team practices. Maybe the most interesting thing is his emphasis on the team’s 5-2 record, as K-Scar points out in a typically insightful column:

For the record, Gene Chizik reminded people Tuesday of his Auburn football team’s record. “We’re 5-2,” he said. “We’re not 2-5.”

He said it to the mass media at his weekly press conference.

He said the same thing to me beforehand in a phone interview.

That he felt the need to say it at all, let alone repeat it, says something about him and something about us …

There are 22 new head coaches in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Among them, only Chip Kelly of 5-1 Oregon has a better record than Chizik.

And Chizik didn’t exactly inherit a championship team. Under Tommy Tuberville, Auburn had lost to at least one unranked opponent for four straight years and in eight out of 10 seasons overall …

Why would anyone think that, all of a sudden, Auburn should be beyond losing a football game to a basketball school like Kentucky?

Besides, Kentucky football has been to three straight bowl games. Auburn football can’t say the same.

For every Terry Bowden, who won his first 20 starts at Auburn and is 8-0 in his reincarnation at North Alabama, there’s a Pete Carroll.

“What was USC in Pete Carroll’s first year?” Chizik asked.

Answer: 6-6. And Bob Stoops was 7-5 in his first year at Oklahoma. And Nick Saban was 7-6 in his first year at Alabama.

It’s still a long way from Chizik to those other former defensive coordinators, but there was a reason their schools, like Auburn, changed coaches in the first place.

“I want this process to speed up and move forward,” Roof said. “[Freeman]”s approaching it the right way. He’s just got to make a positive stride every day.”

OK, so being able to actually rotate different linebackers in–what a concept!–probably has as much to do Roof’s anxiousness as Herring’s play, but still, if Roof was satisfied with the job Herring was doing, I don’t think he’d respond with quite so much enthusiasm when asked about Freeman’s timetable. (For his part, Chizik said Freeman had to “earn” a return to the linebacking rotation but also didn’t rule it out.)

Bleah. Will mentioned something this week that I thought about myself Saturday night: if you’re going to use a gimmick formation, it’s no secret you have to explain it to officials ahead of time so they understand why it’s legal and don’t get nervous and trigger-happy at something they have to figure out on the fly. Since the flag on Auburn’s critical 3rd-and-6 came for false start rather than illegal formation I assumed Malzahn had prepped the officials and that Auburn had just fouled up the execution … and while the latter’s still true, it turns out the former is not:

Both Chizik and Malzahn agreed that the call was correct, but Malzahn was annoyed that the officials seemed confused about the unique formation, standing over the ball when the Tigers appeared ready to go. “You’d have to ask them. I have no idea,” Malzahn said. “It’s a play we’ve ran for about 15 years and never had that happen before, so I don’t know.”

15 years of success or not, Malzahn should have done his due diligence and gotten the refs ready to see what Auburn was going to throw at them. That fourth quarter just wasn’t our Mad Scientist’s finest hour, huh? (For the record, unlike some Auburn fans I’ve read, I’m fine with the play-call: if you have a play you have confidence in and that the players have been drilled enough in to execute, you can’t be afraid to use it with the game on the line. Just ask Boise.)

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Speaking of Ben Tate, did anyone catch that he surpassed Stephen Davis on Auburn’s all-time rushing list? Ben now owns #5 behind Bo Jackson (1), Cadillac Williams (2), James Brooks (3) and Joe Cribbs(4). He has the potential to move up even higher, as he trails Cribbs by 553 yards and Brooks by 708 with 5 (or 6 with a bowl) games to go.

IMHO Brooks and Cribbs should each get an asterisk, as they actually SHARED carries in the same backfield for two seasons (and including William Andrews in 1978).

Be that as it may, Ben has at least earned the title “Top Five Auburn running back”. No mean feat with our history as “Running Back U.”

Joe, I’m not sure to be honest with you, but Chizik said at some point this week the call was correct. I’ll let you know after my second viewing, but my theory is that Todd moved the ball before “snapping” it to Tate for a snap infraction.

Jerry, I agree with you in regards to the 3rd-and-6 call. It likely would have worked, or at the very least gotten us to 4th-and-manageable. I never saw a false start, but if Mean Gene isn’t going to make a big deal out of it, I won’t either. We were still staring at OT as a best-case scenario, it’s not like we were down 2 and a FG would win it.

I didn’t see him move the ball prior. If he did, they would (should) have called his number.

When you’re watching the replay, take note of how many players appear to be on the line during Auburn’s illegal formation on the punt. That one looked like a bad call to me. Also take a look at Kentucky’s illegal formation in the fourth quarter, which was waived…quarterback and two running backs in the backfield, the receiver on the left was off the line, and the receiver on the right was off the line. That was definitely an illegal formation, yet they waived the flag.

I don’t think Chizik likes making waves. Then again, I could be wrong in my observations of the game.

I’m not a big “the refs are out to get us” kind of guy. But I do get worried every time I see Ritter’s crew calling an Auburn game. This game was no exception. Honestly, can you remember the last time you saw a game where one of the teams had zero penalties called against them?

Joe, I’ll take a look. I’ll agree this wasn’t a particularly well officiated game–while I don’t think a team hazing zero flags is THAT uncommon, a 10-to-0 ratio? Man, I’m not sure I remember too many games like that.

Still, Auburn can’t complain–if getting hosed on a couple of calls is bad luck, having a FG blocked for a TD is a huge stroke of good luck. It evens out. The better team Saturday night won, hands down.

Actually, I think it’s much less common for a team with zero penalties. If you kind of flip through a bunch of games, two seems to be about the minimum. Right now, Navy has the least penalties/game in D1 with 3.7. They have three games with only two penalties.

And I agree. Kentucky won the game. There are many things that Auburn could have done better to win it, but they didn’t. That’s the bottom line. I’m not trying to make excuses for Auburn. At the same time, I’m still scratching my head at this officiating. And the fact that the only SEC official I can put a name with their face is Ritter, you have to think that something’s there.

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[…] line: Adams drop(ish) hurt like hell, but McCain’s false start was a killer, we have it on pretty good authority that Pugh moved on the trick play and I thought Berry took a slight step forward as well, and then […]